After decades of producing records, Mitch Easter says he'd like to slow down a bit. But that doesn't mean he wants his studio to slow down as well. In fact, he wants to see it carry on just as it has, only with a new owner.
That's why the legendary Let’s Active frontman and producer announced that after 26 years, his Fidelitorium Recordings studio is on the market. But he doesn't want to sell to just anybody. He says the perfect new owner would be "somebody who does just exactly what I do." The Fielditorium website states that the studio is busy, and Easter intends to sell only to another studio operator.
After spending much of the 1980s producing influential records by R.E.M., Pylon, and The Connells, Easter opened Fidelitorium Recordings in Kernersville in May of 2000. Since then the studio has become a popular spot for a wide variety of artists to record.
"I've been doing this stuff since 1980 as my job. I started very humbly in my parent's garage near Winston-Salem, and we kept working there for 13 years, which was ridiculous because it's a garage," he told WUNC. "We built this place to be more of a standard studio where I could work and freelancers could come in and work too."
Easter says that not everybody realizes that North Carolina can be a hot bed for music production.
"The recording business has changed so much," Easter said. "The old idea of studios being very business-like places off of the Sunset Strip in Hollywood is sort of over. It's hard for those places to exist anymore, so the business has moved to more of a residential model. Going to a big, glamorous studio where Sinatra recorded is very cool, but the economics of that are completely non-existent now."
Watchhouse, Steep Canyon Rangers, Drive-By Truckers, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor are just a few of the artists who have worked with Fidelitorium.
Fidelitorium Recordings exists on a two-acre lot that includes the main studio building, a two-bedroom guesthouse, a smaller rehearsal space, and a 150-year-old brick house that Easter and his wife Tammy have been living in. All of this is included in the sale.
The decision to sell did not come easy, but Easter says it was time.
"I still really like to write songs, and I kind of just want to do that," he said. "Running a studio really does take away from other things in life. I'm so honored to have met all of these people who have come to work here, but it's just my wife and I maintaining everything and sometimes we spend two or three days between sessions just cleaning and doing laundry, and it would be okay to not have to do that all the time."
